Son of the Corps
by Lucillia
Summary: On that infamous Halloween, Xander becomes something that would send the creatures of the night running and screaming.
1. Bester Awakens

When Xander saw that Ethan's was out of toy guns, his shoulders slumped in disappointment. How could he be a soldier without a gun? Since Buffy and Willow were still picking through the costumes, he started sorting through the bargain bin in a desultory fashion while he waited. He found the plastic badge near the bottom. Once he realized what it was, his mood picked up. He'd have to ditch the fatigues and go as something else, but he had the things he needed for the costume that went with the badge in his closet. Sort of.

On the night of All Hallow's Eve as the world went to hell around him, a Psi-Cop named Alfred Bester tore into the mind of the first vampire he came across. They weren't human, so the rules didn't apply. Not that he generally followed the rules anyway. As that former partner of his that had been killed by Ironheart on Babylon 5 had said, "There are rules, then there are rules".


	2. Xander Panics

Xander woke puzzling over the noise he was hearing. It was like there were hundreds of people quietly whispering somewhere nearby. Looking around he found he was in his room, and there wasn't anything out of the ordinary that could account for the noise. It was starting to grate on his nerves and he wished it would stop.

"The simplest method is to build a wall." an eerily familiar voice said. "Imagine that you've got a pile of clickbricks..."

"Clickbricks?" Xander wondered as he searched his room for the source of the voice, hoping it wasn't what he thought it was.

"They're a children's toy that come in sets of between a hundred and a thousand, you put them together to build things depending on the kit." the voice said. "Since they're so common, the Corps often uses them as an analogy to help teach children and adolescents whose abilities have recently manifested how to build rudimentary blocks and shields."

Xander fleetingly thought that the clickbrick things sounded an awful lot like Legos as he looked inside the closet for the source of the voice after failing to find it under his bed or in his laundry pile. Finding it unoccupied, he came to the realization that he had been desperately attempting to deny. He now had what until last night he had thought to be one of the coolest Sci-Fi villains in his head. He ran off in search of Giles screaming the entire way, not even noticing the shifting whispers, snatches of words, and flashes of images in his panic.


	3. Library of Wonder

Xander was breathing heavily as he entered the library. He and Giles weren't the only ones there when he arrived. Buffy, Cordelia, and Willow were there as well. As well as speaking, he could hear other voices that sounded like they belonged to his friends. Alongside the voices there were other impressions and the mental images of what could only be their minds.

Despite his panic over what had apparently happened to him, he couldn't help but stop and stare in wonder as he saw his friends in an entirely new light, a light that showed them to be just as they were.

Willow apparently ran at Willow Babble speed in her head the entire time, and her mind was like quicksilver as it flashed hither and yon inside her head jumping from one topic to another, never staying in quite the same place, and occasionally hopping back to the subject at hand which appeared to be the night before.

_Iwasaghost. Iwasn'tabletotouchanything. HowcouldIopenandclosethedoorofEthan'sshopthen? MaybeIshouldstudymoreaboutghostsincasewerunintothe m. I'llhavetogetonthecomputerlater. That'sright,IwasgoingtohackNASA..._

Buffy who was sitting in an almost proper position rather than the usual large predator sprawl she ended up in when she wasn't paying attention for once was thinking in both English and what sounded like French, switching back and forth between the both of them as if they were one language. Her mind seemed oddly divided yet not as the disparate parts of it all focused on what she was doing at the moment. She currently appeared to be steadily focused on the topic at hand the way a cat would watch its prey before it finally leapt. He couldn't be entirely sure though, because Buffy would switch languages in mid-sentence and he was almost completely unable to understand French.

_Interesting...I'll have to consider that later_ the voice in his head who seemed to be able to follow whatever the hell Buffy was thinking about despite the numerous distracted switches said, sounding slightly intrigued by a long tangle of French that Buffy's mind had slipped into.

"You know French?" Xander blurted, directing it more on his current passenger whom he'd be getting rid of as soon as G-Man came through with the research for him. That's what the dude in tweed was for after all.

_I did grow up outside Geneva. _the Bester voice said, sounding irritated that he'd asked about something that should've been completely obvious in so stupid a manner.

Everyone in the room whirled to face him including Giles who was very turbulent beneath his calm tweedy exterior, and Cordelia who was both as shallow as she acted and yet much deeper at the same time.

"Xander," Giles started, his mind rapidly churning over something that involved a number of dead languages and spitting out several conclusions, several of which seemed to be on the right track "Did you purchase anything from Ethan's for your costume? I was under the impression that it had been entirely homemade, but..."


End file.
